Euthanasia

Diorraing

Big case of Gonzales v Oregon in U.S supreme court at the moment which is about assisted suicide. Personally, I'm against it becuase i don't believe anyone has the right to play God under any circumstances. Does anyone think it will/could be legalised in the new liberal Ireland? This case is even more interesting because the verdict depends on whether or not Bush can get his second nomination in before it.
[URL=http://]http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1128503110015[/URL]

daveirl

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Diorraing

daveirl wrote:

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OK, an Ireland which is gradually becoming more liberal.

daveirl

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Diorraing

daveirl wrote:

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Efforts are also being made to make same-sex marriage legal and allow them to adopt children, hardly efforts to make the country more conservative. Anyway, the question is assisted suicide, which I abhor, even though I'd be quite liberal.

pretty*monster

Diorraing wrote:

. Personally, I'm against it becuase i don't believe anyone has the right to play God under any circumstances.
[URL=http://]http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1128503110015[/URL]

How is keeping a brain dead person alive using machines any less like playing god than euthanasia?

tuxy

daveirl wrote:

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what he means is we are no longer ruled by the catholic church (although its influences can still be seen)

daveirl

daveirl wrote:

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Ian Paisley is against abortion and has fought against its widespread introduction in the North.
So it's not just a catholic thing-paisley being very anti catholic.

People are entitled to their views whether pro or anti whatever -if theres a political demand for it it will come-if there isnt it won't.
Liberalism has little to do with it.One could be technically very liberal on a lot of things but fervently anti abortion.

Diorraing

pretty*monster wrote:

How is keeping a brain dead person alive using machines any less like playing god than euthanasia?

There is quite an obvious distinction. The purpose of life support machines is to buy time in case there is a possibility of the person recovering - if there is no possibility the machine is switched off (not euthanasia). Euthanasia is actively killing someone by omission (of food, water, medical care) or by using drugs.

dahamsta

daveirl wrote:

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Divorce and abortion aren't the only indicators of liberalisation, and it's very closed-minded to concentrate so completely on just two issues, particularly ones as complex and personal as those.

Ireland may be years or even decades behind other countries in some departments - it should be noted that it's years or even decades ahead of many others - but it's most certainly liberalising, despite the best efforts of the current /horrendously/ bad conservative administration. To be perfectly frank, arguing otherwise is just plain /pretending/.

If there hadn't been progress, we'd all still be defining policy totally at the behest of the roman catholic church. (Note use of the word 'totally' before responding.)

Karl Hungus

I'm sorry, but when I'm dying, I don't want my suffering to be prolonged. Either keep my brain alive in a jar, or just kill me.

And quite frankly, I don't see how euthanasia could be considered "Playing God" because if that's defined by interupting the life cycle as it supposedly should take place then surely every doctor who saves, or even extends a life is "Playing God"? Hogwash tbh.

Diorraing

Diorraing wrote:

Big case of Gonzales v Oregon in U.S supreme court at the moment which is about assisted suicide. Personally, I'm against it becuase i don't believe anyone has the right to play God under any circumstances. Does anyone think it will/could be legalised in the new liberal Ireland? This case is even more interesting because the verdict depends on whether or not Bush can get his second nomination in before it.
[URL=http://]http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1128503110015[/URL]

Under any circumstances?

Do you oppose life support machines? Surely keeping someone alive when they'd otherwise be dead is playing god ?

What is "playing god" anway? What is "god" anyway? Why shouldn't people "play him"?


John Stuart Mill said "Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign". I agree with him.

Memnoch

I don't understand why anyone would insist on prolonging an individual's suffering for their own ends. If a person is suffering and destined to die anyway and wants to hasten the end so that they have to suffer less then I don't see how anyone can object to it.

Off course religious fanatics as always will object to things not because there is any logical or reasonable thought but simply because that is what they have been brainwashed to think.

Diorraing

Memnoch wrote:

I don't understand why anyone would insist on prolonging an individual's suffering for their own ends. If a person is suffering and destined to die anyway and wants to hasten the end so that they have to suffer less then I don't see how anyone can object to it.

Pain is now thoroughly treatable so physical suffering really can't be used as an argument. With euthanasia there is reduced pressure to improve curative or symptomatic treatment. If it were available 40 years ago we mightn't have the same advances in medicine we have today. Anyway, keeping people alive leaves the door open if a new medicine becomes available, whereas euthanasia is an irreversible option.

Memnoch wrote:

If a person is suffering and destined to die anyway

How can you be 100% sure that someone is destined to die? And if you are sure, then let them die in their own good time. Euthanasia is actively killing them and removing any chance of recovery.

d22ontour

Diorraing wrote:

How can you be 100% sure that someone is destined to die? And if you are sure, then let them die in their own good time. Euthanasia is actively killing them and removing any chance of recovery.

Everybody is 100% destined to die only the time is not certain. :rolleyes:

Many people have illnesses that are uncurable/treatable and suffer slow and agonising deaths.I don't see how it's actively killing them if they choose to die hence the term assisted suicide.

Doctor Benway

Diorraing wrote:

There is quite an obvious distinction. The purpose of life support machines is to buy time in case there is a possibility of the person recovering - if there is no possibility the machine is switched off (not euthanasia). Euthanasia is actively killing someone by omission (of food, water, medical care) or by using drugs.

Why does turning a life support machine off not count as euthanasia, when (according to you) withdrawal of other forms of medical treatment does?

bonkey

Diorraing wrote:

Personally, I'm against it becuase i don't believe anyone has the right to play God under any circumstances.

I bet you have no objections to doctors intervening to keep a patient alive when doing otherwise would allow them to die naturally.

If thats not playing God, then what is?

Anyone can take life. There's nothing Godly about it. Taking your own life is also not Godly. So how is assisting someone to take their own life playing God?

jc

bonkey

Diorraing wrote:

There is quite an obvious distinction. The purpose of life support machines is to buy time in case there is a possibility of the person recovering

No, its not. Its purpose is to keep someone alive for some reason when they would die without its intervention. It is actively forestalling death. Even if the hope is that "someday" the person may recover (through medical advances or their own improvement, you are forestalling their natural death in order to attempt to offer them a chance of life that they would not have without the machine.

Euthanasia is actively killing someone by omission (of food, water, medical care) or by using drugs.

Euthenasia with consent is assisting suicide, to ensure that it is as painless, riskless etc. as possible. No more, no less. That is the issue at stake in Oregan. Its quite possible (I would say probable, but someone would be bound to misinterpret that) that some of those who have availed of this legal system would have taken their own lives had they not been granted the euthenasiac option.

Is going out into the woods and blowing your own head off with a shotgun (in order to avoid dieing a long, slow, debilitating and incredibly painful) death playing God? If not, then why is it playing God to allow some die with a bit of dignity instead of in a field with soiled pants with a double-ought lying beside them? They will die in comparable timeframes either way.

Incidentally, you are aware of the conditions under which assisted suicide is legal in Oregan, I take it?

With some misgivings for how well our government (or any other) would be able to police this, and the inevitable border-line squabbles, I think it should most definitely be legal.

jc

dahamsta

bonkey wrote:

Anyone can take life. There's nothing Godly about it.

Many would argue that it's all part of "God's master plan". I wouldn't, but many would, including the roman catholic church.

Diorraing

d22ontour wrote:

Many people have illnesses that are uncurable/treatable and suffer slow and agonising deaths.I don't see how it's actively killing them if they choose to die hence the term assisted suicide.

There are often many other factors at work in a patient's decision to have assisted suicide. Families have all kinds of subtle ways, conscious and unconscious, of putting pressure on a patient to request euthanasia and relive them of the financial and social burden of care. Many patients already feel guilty for imposing burdens on those on those who care for them, even when the families are happy to bear the burden. To provide an avenue for the discharge of that guilt in a request for euthanasia is to risk putting
to death a great many patients who do not wish to die.

bonkey

To provide an avenue for the discharge of that guilt in a request for euthanasia is to risk putting
to death a great many patients who do not wish to die

They don't wish to die?

Unfortunately, they have an incurable, terminal illness which - in the case of Oregan law - is going to kill them within 6 months.

Also, at the end of the day, it is their choice.

If they were badgered into killing themselves - as you are effectively suggesting - one again has to ask whether or not the legality of euthenasia has anything to do with it.

Indeed, given that you see assisting in suicide as playing God, its amazing you're expending your effort on this side of th argument and not targetting those family members who try and play God (by your apparent reasoning) by encouraging someone (consciously or unconsciously) to kill themselves to save financial/emotional strain.

Face it...your objection is nothing more than that you find it distasteful, and you seem to wish to play God by dictating to these terminally ill people what they may and may not do with their own lives.

jc

Diorraing

bonkey wrote:

If they were badgered into killing themselves - as you are effectively suggesting - one again has to ask whether or not the legality of euthenasia has anything to do with it.

The legality of Euthanasia has everything to do with it!!!! They wouldn't kill themselves if it was illegal - there wouldn't be that option. I'm not saying either that everone is badgered into doing it but it does play a significant role.

bonkey

Diorraing wrote:

The legality of Euthanasia has everything to do with it!!!! They wouldn't kill themselves if it was illegal - there wouldn't be that option.

Incorrect. Unless you are already incapacitated, you always have the option of killing yourself.

Legalising what you are terming euthenasia (but which in Oregan is really assisted suicide) allows someone to help so that - as I mentioned earlier - your last moments aren't spent in a forest with soiled pants as your brains leak out the hole you've just created in your skull.

Yes, I'm deliberately choosing an offensively graphic description of what suicide might entail, but the reality is that the point of the law in Oregan is to allow people to legally choose the moment of their end, and to meet it with dignity, rather than either suffering to natural death and/or suffering the indignity of unassisted suicide.

Diorraing

bonkey wrote:

But the reality is that the point of the law in Oregan is to allow people to legally choose the moment of their end, and to meet it with dignity, rather than either suffering to natural death and/or suffering the indignity of unassisted suicide.

Do you mean to tell me that people who don't take euthanasia are in someway undignified!?! I believe that fighting on until the very end is the most dignified thing that anyone can do.

Cronus333

Karl Hungus wrote:

I'm sorry, but when I'm dying, I don't want my suffering to be prolonged. Either keep my brain alive in a jar, or just kill me.

And quite frankly, I don't see how euthanasia could be considered "Playing God" because if that's defined by interupting the life cycle as it supposedly should take place then surely every doctor who saves, or even extends a life is "Playing God"? Hogwash tbh.

Here here!!

Sand

Do you mean to tell me that people who don't take euthanasia are in someway undignified!?! I believe that fighting on until the very end is the most dignified thing that anyone can do.

Ive just returned from visiting my Grandmother who was very close to death mid-week and though she has rallied slightly is still terribly frail and feeble and is far from out of the woods. Shes over 93 years old and had a very hard life and has always been very proud and stubbornly independant. Shes at the stage now where she cannot even go to the toiliet without the assistance of a nurse, which is deeply humiliating for her. Shes in the depths of depression and has more than once said she hates the way she is now.

She's an old-school Catholic, so even the concept of euthanasia would never even arise. She'll endure until modern medicine is unable to provide whatever combination of painkillers and other assorted drugs will keep her alive. I will say that what I have learned from witnessing her dignified struggle and how unhappy and angry she is with her body letting her down is that I never want to become that old and there are worse things than death. Having your independance taken from you is one of them. Modern medicine can keep people alive for longer and longer these days but only so far as they can be practical invalids. Euthanasia / Assisted suicide at least provides those who arent brave enough to face years or decades of dependance the option to meet the inevitability of death on their own terms. Like I said my Grandmother would never choose it as she'd fear for her soul, but Id certainly like the option.

Personally, I'm against it becuase i don't believe anyone has the right to play God under any circumstances.

Granted thats what you believe so feel free not to exercise the option if it is ever available to you. Others believe differently. Unless you can provide your papers proving your status as Gods representitive on Earth whose to say whose playing God? Doctors play God all the time, bringing people back from deaths door - surely thats intefering with Gods plan...As Mark "Chopper" Reed said, "Why would I shoot someone, and then bring them to the hospital? It defeats the whole purpose of shooting them in the first place".

black_jack

Diorraing wrote:

There are often many other factors at work in a patient's decision to have assisted suicide. Families have all kinds of subtle ways, conscious and unconscious, of putting pressure on a patient to request euthanasia and relive them of the financial and social burden of care. Many patients already feel guilty for imposing burdens on those on those who care for them, even when the families are happy to bear the burden. To provide an avenue for the discharge of that guilt in a request for euthanasia is to risk putting
to death a great many patients who do not wish to die.

I think this suggestion ignores some essential facts.

1. Families are relived of the financial burden, by the state. Its why we pay PRSI.

2. The suggestion that families would be be willing, to press for euthanasia.

3. That the euthanasia option would not be rigiorlously investigated, by medicial psychologists and social workers, and before being agreed upon that the person wanting to commit euthanasia is of sound mind and body and willing and eager to engage on this course.

Sand wrote:

She's an old-school Catholic, so even the concept of euthanasia would never even arise. She'll endure until modern medicine is unable to provide whatever combination of painkillers and other assorted drugs will keep her alive. I will say that what I have learned from witnessing her dignified struggle and how unhappy and angry she is with her body letting her down is that I never want to become that old and there are worse things than death. Having

I understand and have witnessed the same. It's difficult, it's painful and its frustrating. You know theres no hope, theres only delaying the invetiable. Whats worse is knowing the person you care about wants desperately to shuffle off this mortal coil.

To suggest that someone has a better idea of how you should live or die, and should have more control of those decisions that affect you, than you, is just arrogance.